Celebrating impact

2026 Partner Awards

The Partner Awards honor partners who turned their digital platforms into measurable results. This year we recognized four categories of impact, plus two special honors: New Partner of the Year and Digital Lead of the Year.

Country Visions made paperless the default for statements. Mail had grown unreliable, and printing statements duplicated what the co-op had already invested in AgVend.

After getting internal alignment, the team found a way in Agris to generate statements without sending them to the print run. It then switched every customer in Connect to paperless and gave growers two months to switch back if they wanted. Nine months later, 86% of growers, more than 7,300, are still enrolled. That saves $22,107 a month, or $198,963 in nine months and counting.

The team expected more pushback from customers than it got. Its advice to other partners: “Rip the bandaid off — but communicate.”

MFA now runs 100% of its CFA financing transactions through MFA Connect. It has processed more than $84M through the integration in 10 months. Invoices and prepays settle faster, with fewer errors on customer accounts.

To measure the impact, MFA surveyed the employees who handle these transactions. It averaged their answers, then cut every result by 30% to stay conservative.

• Credit administration: time per transaction fell from 30 minutes to 2, and she now handles only 15% of transactions. Net savings: 2,475 hours.
• Field staff: time per transaction fell from 15 minutes to 2. Savings: 1,084 hours.
• Area credit managers: a new review step adds 21 hours.

The net result is 3,538 hours and $123,830 saved, about $24.75 per transaction. That’s nearly two full-time employees’ worth of capacity, without adding headcount.

AgVend and CFA first trained MFA’s credit team and sales managers, who then trained everyone else and answered questions. The credit team watched for error patterns and retrained as needed. Once the new process worked, MFA shut down the old methods so there wasn’t a choice on how to do it.

River Valley set out to build a Whole Acre approach, connecting grain, agronomy, energy, and feed conversations into one customer strategy. At its annual Sales Kickoff, regional teams from all four divisions chose shared target customers and set joint sales goals. Then they used the River Valley Team Hub to put that alignment into action.

In the field, every joint call was logged as a labeled Client Note. Tags alerted teammates in other divisions to new opportunities, and monthly reporting kept teams accountable. In 2025, 39 team members logged 420 joint sales call notes across 277 customers.

The results came from customers who had no sales in a division in 2024 but did in 2025. They brought in over $1.4M in new agronomy, energy, and feed revenue, plus more than 600,000 new bushels delivered. It took no new staff or technology beyond the AgVend platform.

Five Star wants to remain a trusted partner for its farmer-owners “5, 10, and 50 years from now.” Under Operation Easy, its effort to become the easiest place for customers to do business, Five Star started by listening. It used surveys, one-on-one conversations, and a targeted text campaign across every department.

Customers asked for clearer statements, digital contracts, fewer phone calls, and faster access to settlements. They wanted more self-service, but not at the cost of personal relationships. Rather than solve each department’s needs separately, Five Star chose one platform and built Five Star Link with AgVend. A core group of internal “gurus” set it up and tested it, then trained the entire team, not just sales.

Adoption among its core member base rose from 8% on the old platform to 50% in 11 months. That is a 525% increase. Customers keep coming back. Every month, nearly 50% of feed customers, 34% of grain customers, and 26% of energy and agronomy customers log in.

One of Five Star’s largest customers summed it up: “This is the best thing Five Star has ever done.”

Cedar County launched in May 2025 with 80% of its customer contact info ready, after cleaning up data during onboarding. One week after launch:

• Three chronically past-due accounts had paid up
• $20K in digital payments had come in
• The co-op was 65% of the way to its six-month activation goal

Within 28 days, it had hit or beaten every six-month benchmark AgVend sets. Within six months of launch:

• $1.5M in digital payments
• 100% of manual autopay accounts converted to portal enrollment
• 85% fewer grain contracts mailed
• On track for $60K a year from new credit card fees, offsetting the platform’s cost

Cedar County had no formal marketing role before. Now it runs email and text campaigns, including 17,000 cash bid texts, that perform above AgVend averages.

Dylan, VP of Customer Engagement and Talent Development, has led CFS’s digital transformation from agronomy into energy, feed, and grain. Rather than hand down mandates, he built SOP committees with members from every role and region. Those committees draft, challenge, refine, and approve the SOPs themselves. Highlights from his nomination:

• 52% of agronomy contracts now signed digitally, up from about 1–2%
• More than 50% of agronomy plans shared digitally with customers
• $850K in revenue lift through a structured, strategic marketing plan
• 45% of eligible customers enrolled in Rooted Rewards, CFS’s new loyalty program
• 171 processes identified for SOP standardization across divisions

Looking ahead

Partner Summit 2026 showed how far the AgVend Partner Network has come. It also showed how much partners gain from learning from each other. From AI to Nexus to the everyday wins in these award stories, the next chapter of ag retail is being written by the people in that room.

Thank you to every partner, speaker, and sponsor who made this year our best yet. We can’t wait to build on it together.